My last two posts were quite heavy, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to go there with this blog. But ultimately, those thoughts and feelings are a part of my life and I don't want to hold back. I will not, however, dwell on such thoughts either. I'm trying a new concept out: Feel my emotions when they come along and then let them go when they've been thoroughly exhausted. It's kind of a Buddhist thing and a major shift from my Catholic upbringing. The Catholic thing didn't work out for me too well, so this is a new attempt at understanding the ways of the world. I'll let you know how it works out for me.
This weekend was very nice. Bruno and I were going to go do a bunch of fun things but rain was predicted so we opted to just run errands and then nest at home. It was great. Bruno made soup Saturday night and we opened up a bottle of wine. During our errands we had picked up one of those game consoles (not electronic- wood) that has chess, checkers, Chinese checkers and about a billion and one other games. We popped in a Modern Jazz Quartet CD and played Chinese Checkers all night. It was the perfect night!
After Bruno was all tuckered out and went to bed, I stayed up until 4 in the morning finishing off the book that I was reading. I couldn't put it down! If you enjoy reading, I highly recommend Haruki Murakami's books. I have only read two: Sputnik Sweetheart & The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. I'm working on The Elephant Vanishes which is a series of short stories and Norwegian Wood just arrived in the mail today. Murakami is the most amazing writer and inspires me in so many ways. He is a Japanese writer who is influenced by both the pulp detective stories of the 40's and the beat writers of the 60's. His work is unlike anything that I have ever read and I'm certain that it will be studied in Universities for years to come.
I started The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles last week and it took me 5 days to finish it because it was so long (over 600 pages). Usually I can just plow through a book like that in a day or two, but his writing is so beautiful and complex that it requires that you take more time to digest it. The story is the weirdest story that I've ever read. It's about a married 30-year-old guy who quits his job at a law firm for no good reason other than he's bored with it. He becomes a house-husband of sorts and busies himself with the chores and cooking. The book opens on a weekday morning. The guy is cooking spaghetti and the phone rings. It's a woman who claims to know him (but she won't tell him who she is) and asks for just 10 minutes of his time. After only a few minutes she breaks into phone sex and he hangs up. The phone rings again and this time its his wife. She wants him to go out and look for their missing cat, Norboro Wataya. He doesn't find the cat. When he gets home the phone rings again. It's a psychic named Malta Kano and she has information about his missing cat and invites him to meet her for tea. When he goes, Malta gives him all sorts of cryptic information but tells him nothing about where his cat is. For the next 100 pages or so the main character searches for the cat until his wife goes missing too. He works with the psychic and her sister, Creta Kano who is a prostitute of the mind, to find his wife.
The book is an epic, to be sure. It goes back and forth between present day Japan and WWII. The WWII stories were the most fascinating to me. I was surprised by this because I'm not a big fan of war fiction, but this was so different. I also don't know much about WWII from the Japanese perspective, so I was intrigued by that aspect.
I can't urge everyone I know enough to run out a read this book! It was AMAZING!
Comments